Dive Brief:
- The National League of Cities and Google announced on Wednesday a report on how local governments can leverage artificial intelligence-driven technologies — and mitigate the risks they present.
- AI offers cities the opportunity to become more efficient, sustainable and livable, NLC CEO and Executive Director Clarence Anthony said in a foreword to the report. He pointed to applications such as optimizing traffic flow, reducing energy consumption and streamlining administrative tasks.
- However, not all cities are using or even have access to AI, which could turn “the digital divide that has plagued many cities into an ‘AI divide,’” Karan Bhatia, vice president and global head of government affairs and public policy at Google, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
While the concept of AI has existed for decades, it burst into the public discourse in 2022 and 2023 with the release of generative AI applications that allowed people around the world to engage more directly with the technology for the first time, the NLC and Google report says.
Generative AI, which can create new content like text and images based on patterns learned from existing data, is just one of numerous categories of AI. Other types of AI relevant to local government are predictive AI, which makes predictions about future events or trends, and perceptive AI, which interprets and understands sensory inputs.
Each of these types of AI brings distinct promise and pitfalls, says the report, which was spearheaded by the NLC’s AI Advisory Committee.
Generative AI, for example, can be used to translate public meetings and 311 calls or to develop chatbots that can respond to resident questions. However, generative AI can make mistakes. New York City’s chatbot made headlines earlier this year after providing residents with misinformation on topics such as housing rights and worker protections.
AI tools may also reflect existing biases present in the data they are trained on; for example, they could reinforce existing inequitable resource allocation, the report says. AI tools also may pose data privacy and security risks and become a target for cyberattacks.
The report contains a toolkit that walks cities through the steps of getting started with AI, including conducting a landscape analysis, assessing readiness, developing use guidance and policy, and engaging the public.
Throughout the report, NLC and Google highlight how some cities are already using AI. Numerous communities have chatbots that help users find information about the city and its services, while Sunnyvale, California, gives residents who attend in-person city council meetings access to in-time closed captioning translation. Memphis, Tennessee, is using AI to find potholes by analyzing video footage from city vehicles and combining those results with existing data. Tucson, Arizona, meanwhile, is using AI software to predict which water pipes are most likely to fail next, helping the city prioritize maintenance and repairs.
But barriers to these applications remain: Resource constraints, concerns from city staff or elected officials and lack of political will to invest in technology are among the challenges cities face in implementing AI, the report says.
